It's not just humans--bacteria also have memory, study suggests

[Judi Lynn]

JULY 22, 2024
Editors' notes
by Reichman University

A recent study led by Dr. Ilana Kolodkin-Gal from the Scojen Institute for Synthetic Biology at Reichman University has found that beneficial bacteria, such as Bacillus subtilis—which is used, among other things, as a probiotic and a biological control agent—have memory.

The bacteria are able to express genes associated with colonization and symbiosis with their host for generations, even after being detached from the host. This transfer of information between generations of bacteria allows them to efficiently recolonize a new host, giving them an advantage over naïve bacteria that have never formed a stable interaction with a plant.

The genes with multigenerational inheritance patterns were associated with resistance to stress, highlighting the importance of the defenses that the bacteria develop during plant colonization. This multigenerational inheritance stabilizes the interactions of the beneficial bacteria with their host. The researchers believe that similar mechanisms enable the multigenerational interaction of beneficial probiotic bacteria from the same group in the human gut, enabling long-term protection against disease.

The study is published in the journal Microbiological Research.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Jonathan Friedman's group from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Asaph Aharoni's group from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Among the researchers who participated in the study are Dr. Omri Gilhar from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Dr. Liat Rahamim-Ben Navi from the Scojen Institute at Reichman University.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-humans-bacteria-memory.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. I wouldn't call inheritance memory. Interesting all the same. . . . . nt

[Warpy]

3. Depends on how you look at it

After all, bacteria don't have infants that require education, they replicate, producing exact copies of themselves (if all goes well and there are no transcription errors in the DNA), and that includes retaining memory engrams encoded into proteins or other material.

For gut bacteria, that engram could be "Mom's home cooking, yum. Cheap convenience store burritos, go dormant until they pass by."

Bacteria atre turning out to be a lot more complicated than was once thought.

[BadgerKid]

5. I wonder if epigenetic modifications might seem like memory.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. Epigenetics is fascinating. It's how one ID twin can develop cancer but the other not. . . . nt

[Bayard]

2. "naive bacteria"

I like that term, and can think of many uses for it.

[Judi Lynn]

4. I did a double-take immediately with that term! Hadn't recognized it had great possibilities, yet!

Cool!